The earth laughs in flowers
by storm-petrel
Summary: -maybe it's ironic that the tears are what make her eyes sparkle like they used to when it was just her and her sunflowers and Teddy-


_**For the Hogwarts Online prompt of the day, **__**sunflowers.

* * *

**_

_Primary significance: Gifts of radiant warmth, sunflowers are the happiest of flowers, and their meanings include loyalty and longevity. They are unique in their ability to provide energy in the form of nourishment and vibrancy, an attribute which mirrors the sun and the energy provided by its heat and light. _

* * *

_i) my world would wear a smile on its face_

"Here. It's for you." A six year old Lily waves the proffered flower in his face, bouncing up and down in front of him. "It's to make you happy." She informs him proudly, and he catches the wildly flailing hand in his own, wrapping his long fingers around hers and the flower.

It's yellow. So very yellow, he can't help but smile, and she grins toothily back at him. "So…?" she prompts, and he looks quizzically into her expectant green eyes. She heaves a long-suffering sigh and hops onto his bed, crossing her legs and leaning back against his side with an air of contentment. "Are you happy now, silly." He nods and smiles. "Very happy, thank you." He inspects the rather garish sunflower clutched in his hand, and chuckles. She pokes him. "Don't be sad. You don't need her. You have me."

He pastes a grin on his face (for her) and tickles her suddenly, dropping the flower beside him as he captures her arms in one hand, her peals of childish laughter echoing throughout the room.

_ii) and I can't stop smiling_

She first does magic at age five, making sunflowers fall from the ceiling and bloom from every available surface. Albus and James have a strop because their bedroom has painted itself yellow, and it takes Harry four days to entirely remove all the sunflowers from the house (he kept finding renegade ones in the roof).

_iii) hey darlin', you're beautiful_

The dress is very yellow. He teases her about it for a long time, putting on his sunglasses whenever she enters the room and making jokes about forest fires and beacons and flares and Morse code, and its fine, because he's _Teddy_ and he's _allowed to_. But then James catches on and it's _anyone lost a flaming banana?_ And _you look like traffic lights_ and _did someone dump paint all over you?_ And she's running to him in tears, and so he shouts at James and James shouts back (and gets sent to his room, despite his oh-so-old ten years), and its open warfare for six painful days, until her brother buys her a sunflower headband, and all is forgiven.

_iv) watch me come alive_

After much persistence (and interference on Teddy's part) Ginny finally caves to Lily's request and relinquishes part of her precious (and spacious) garden to her youngest child, and the small patch of earth at the bottom of the garden between the apple tree and the old, run down, shed is _hers_.

She plants sunflowers there (of course) and the speed at which they grow for her never ceases to amaze her family. She loves them, cares for them and prunes the apple tree to give them the sunlight they crave.

When she leaves for Hogwarts, her ecstasy is dampened somewhat by the sorrow at leaving her little haven. In the two years since she's taken control, the three foot patch has expanded to curve around the apple tree and reach across to the chicken coop on the other side, and the old shed is completely surrounded by the yellow blooms. She has a little path, barely wide enough for her eleven year old feet to tread, that leads to their midst, and there she sits in the summer, surrounded by the blooms that reach way above her little red head. Ginny marvels at the way they thrive under her touch, and they bloom for the longest period she's ever known of them.

When she returns, in the Christmas holidays, the flowers have withered and died, and she cries on his shoulder in the freezing winter air, knelt on the hard ground.

She plants them again in the summer, lavishing untiring love and care on them until their vibrancy rivals even that of their predecessors. (He thinks he might love her then, but she's twelve and he's twenty-three and it's eleven years of wrong, so he pushes it away)

These flowers (despite being annuals) live on for several years to the amazement of her family, but Lily remains unsurprised. When questioned, she answers, "They are my friends, they _want_ to live." And astonishingly, it seems they do, blooming better and brighter each summer.

_v) the nights are getting darker_

But then she turns fifteen, and at Christmas she visits home for only a few days before Flooing to Romania to chase the dragons, and she returns taller and more confident, with a spring in her step and a sparkle in her eye Teddy has only seen the sunflowers awaken before.

But she spares her flowers barely a glance over Easter, and her feet hardly touch the ground as she visits her friends and her boyfriend, and Teddy, her best friend since she was born, is pushed aside.

Come the summer she's chasing dragons in Romania again, and the letters to Teddy get fewer and further between, and her sunflowers are doing their best to survive on Ginny's love, but it's not what they need.

And her fifth year vanishes, and the sixth is nearly over, until it's the summer again and she's turning seventeen, and when she comes home from school her sunflowers have died and with them her sparkle.

_vi) the sun don't shine like she used to_

He picks her up from the station in his battered Ford Fiesta because her parents are visiting James in America where he is playing Quidditch for England, and he hateshateshates the stranger she's become. She is thin, much too thin and her faded denim shorts and black t-shirt with some band name scribbled across the front, and the black eyeliner and the viciously straightened hair are the furthest thing from wild curls and vivid yellow dresses and sunshine and smiles and bright bright flowers.

She sits, pressed against the window in his car, and as her chipped-black-nailed fingers reach towards the stereo button, he decides to confront her. "Lil," he is ashamed at the catch in his throat as he hits the off button on the radio, and turns to face her as much as he can whilst driving. She turns to him, an expectant look on her face. "Yes?" she prompts and he sighs. "Lily, _what happened_?" a look of confusion passes across her face, and if he didn't know her better he'd think it was genuine. "What do you mean, Teddy?" she asks, with an almost disinterested air, and he cracks. "This!" he shouts, barely keeping his eyes on the road. "You stopped writing to me nearly two years ago! Me, Lily! We were best friends for nearly fifteen fucking years, Lil, and then you stop writing! You never come home any more, always off gallivanting with your friends, boyfriends, or else you're risking your neck in Romania! And now, you're being so distant, like we barely know each other and it's scaring me Lils because you're like a stranger to me now!" the car behind him hoots, and he pulls over into the side of the road, stopping the car and fully turning to face her. She just watches him, her face utterly blank. "Your family is worried sick about you," at this she snorts. He stops mid-rant and stares at her. "They are." He says. "Yeah right," she finally retorts. "Like my family actually give a shit about their disappointment daughter. Harry Potter's kid, and I'm in Slytherin, I don't play Quidditch, and Herbology is my best subject." And he doesn't know whether to laugh at the final show of emotion or to cry because her parents love her with all their hearts but they will always expect more of her than she can, or wants to, give them.

"Is that really what you think?" he asks finally, quietly, and she looks up at him with a carefully schooled blank face, and turns away.

The rest of the journey to his flat is spent in silence (she's staying with him for a few days while her parents are away) and he helps her carry her trunk upstairs before she locks herself in her room, and doesn't come out.

She emerges at dinner time, and plunks herself down in front of the microwave lasagne, but she barely picks at her food and his attempts to make conversation fail miserably.

She stays in her room for the rest of that day and the next, and it's the following evening before another conversation is held in his flat.

He's finally got her talking about school, and she's telling him about the new Herbology teacher who's one of her dad's old school friends and a war hero but actually knows his stuff who is teaching them about a new breed of a well-known plant that is thought to cure dragon pox. It's in the middle of explaining the plant's similarities to sunflowers that she falters, and he sees the pain flash across her eyes as she remembers her sunflowers, lying withered at the bottom of her garden, killed by years of neglect.

He sees a spark of the old Lily as she bullies him into Flooing her home _right now_ and she sprints down the dark garden, falling to her knees amidst the crumpled stems of her once vibrant friends, and it's her eleventh winter all over again as tears spill from those grass green eyes and she sobs brokenly into his shoulder.

It takes all his skills of persuasion to bring her inside and make her wait until morning before she tries to salvage the remnants of the flowers and she grudgingly allows herself to be led back to his flat.

The next morning she has Flooed there before he is properly awake, and he brings her coffee as she works, re-digging the plot and burning the plants she could not save.

Only two of her original plants were rescue-able but she plants new seeds, and he watches her from nearby, the hair that she hasn't bothered to straighten tumbling around her shoulders in wild curls and the sun shining off the now-filthy yellow t-shirt. He can't take his eyes off her as she straightens up and when she flashes him a grin, he knows he's screwed.

But that evening when she's collapsed on his sofa in her pyjamas with hot chocolate clutched tightly in her hands (with the dirt still under her nails) and they're staring mindlessly at the Muggle TV, there's a knock at the door.

He goes to answer it, and Lily pricks up her ears as the honey tones of Victoire drift through the flat towards her. "Lily!" her cousin cries, and the redhead is engulfed in her tasteful perfume as Victoire hugs her, gushing about how long it's been since they've seen each and doesn't she look well and how's school going until Lily just wants her to fuck off. "I just dropped by to see Teddy," the part-Veela declares with a flick of her shimmering blonde hair, and Lily takes her cue and leaves, dumping the dirty mug in the sink and climbing the stairs two at a time.

Teddy apologises for his girlfriend the following morning over breakfast, but Lily feigns disinterest and steers the topic quickly away from _Victoire_.

She Floos home the next day, and for a second he dares to hope that maybe she might be different, now the sunflowers have been resurrected, but she emerges from her room with her hair flawlessly straight, green eyes lined with black, and a skull emblazoned on her charcoal grey t-shirt. She doesn't kiss his cheek in farewell like she did at , nor give the one armed hug from twelvethirteenfourteen; it's the stranger's nod from fifteensixteen, when she stopped being LilywhoisTeddy'sbestfriendandalwayswillbe and became Lily, with the too straight hair and the too black eyeliner and the thrice pierced ears.

_vii) hey, open wide, here comes original sin_

And July flashes past and then it's August and she's seventeen, and it's the biggest and best (and last) coming of age party this Potter-Weasley generation will ever throw.

She is stunning, in a dress the colour of shadows that just floats around her thin body with an ethereal air, and smoky eye shadow (and carefully masked purple bags), and Roxanne (or someone) has bullied her into not straightening her hair so the carefully arranged curls tumble down her back. The party is fabulous and she is surrounded by family and admirers for the first few hours, laughing and sipping drinks, green eyes (that glitter rather than sparkle, he thinks) dancing with happiness.

However, just after midnight she slips away, and Roxanne covers for her, but Teddy knows exactly where to find her.

The path through the sunflowers is narrower than he remembers, and he barely manages to avoid crushing a yellow bloom as he sits beside her on the ground. Her fingers are shredding a fallen petal, his curl nervously in his lap. They speak at the same time.

"I have-"

"Do you-"

And she smiles weakly. "You first," she says. He looks at his hands. "I have something to tell you," she nods at him to go on, but the words catch in his throat. "Victoire wants us to get married."

She turns her face away, staring hard at the ground, and her voice is thick with tears she refuses to shed. "I hope you two are very happy together," is what she attempts to say, but it comes out as a hoarse "I hope," before her voice cracks. She tries valiantly to hold back the tears as she scrambles to her feet, but a single drop reflects the yellow sunflowers as it falls to the earth. He reaches out a trembling hand to catch her wrist as she tries to run, to disappear, anything before she breaks down completely, and she turns to him, venom practically oozing from her lips. "So that's it then. You're getting married, living happily ever after and that's just fucking perfect, isn't it? Cos you've got _Victoire_," she hisses, and the names has never sounded more like an insult as it does in those starlit moments. "Practically perfect in every way,"

He tries to speak but she ignores him, casting a silencing charm around them as her voice rises. "Merlin, Ted, are you a fucking idiot or something? Do you want to know why I stopped answering your letters? Because I liked you Ted, a lot more than your eleven years younger god-sister and annoying best friend should, cos you've always had Victoire, so the easiest thing to do was to shut you out, so you couldn't fuck with my heart any more. Happy now?" the tears overflow and spill down her cheeks and maybe it's ironic that the tears are what make her eyes sparkle like they used to when it was just her and her sunflowers and Teddy. And she's his lonely flower, who wreathes herself in lies like fragile paper chains, and she's got the world eating falsehoods out of her hand but is still trying to convince herself.

He's on his feet in a heartbeat, clutching her wrists. "Do you mean it?" his words tumble over themselves in his rush to get them out, and she furrows her brow in confusion. "When you said you liked me. Did you mean it? Do you still?" he barely waits for her to finish her nod before his lips are seeking hers, but she turns her face aside and they clumsily land on her tear-stained cheek. With a sad sort of smile she pushes him away. "You're Victoire's. I won't do this to her." and he sighs a little and moves his lips to her ear. "Won't you listen?" he breathes. "I said no to Victoire."

And he watches the understanding steal across her face like dawn across a glacier, the reality lighting up her eyes and then she's kissing him and they're wrapped so tightly together he's seeing breathing living pure _her_.

They don't rejoin the party until they see the lit wands tracing the garden, and he rubs the tear tracks from her face with a thumb, and she wipes away the lip gloss on his mouth, and hand in hand they walk out of the sunflowers.

Roxanne is there, standing just outside their patch, under the pretext of looking for them, taking her duty of cover-up seriously to the last. Her face lights up with joy as she sees them emerge and she hugs Lily tightly before pulling away. "I found them!" she cries excitedly to the rest of the search-party, and soon there is a forest of lights in front of them. Teddy's eyes flick over James and Al, who look thunderstruck, Harry with disbelief written all over his face, Lucy and Molly (who look delighted) until they finally come to rest on Victoire, the Veela beauty disfigured somewhat by the fury effusing from her lovely face, and his stomach ties itself in knots.

For a moment, no one speaks. The tension is almost palpable, and Lily clutches his hand so hard it hurts, before Victoire's champagne glass shatters on the grass, and the spell is broken. The crowd erupts, James and Al advancing on Teddy with identical menacing expressions, but Victoire gets there first.

_**Crack**_**.**

She slaps him around the face before turning to Lily, and the venom of the redhead is nothing compared to the sheer hatred of the blonde and when she speaks it's a mocking whisper that only just disguises the pain with poison.

"So you finally got what you wanted," she hisses, only just loud enough for her to hear. "You've wanted to get your claws into my boyfriend for years now, haven't you, you _whore_. The other boys at your feet were never enough for the famous Lily Potter, she had to have this one, even if it meant stealing him off her cousin." Green eyes stare coolly back into ice blue. "He's not yours." Lily murmurs, her voice quivering with the effort of controlling herself. Victoire smiles a humourless smile. "He'll never be yours, either, so you can just fuck off already, you little bitch."

Teddy wraps his arm around Lily's waist. "Vic,"

"What?" she screams (and he thinks that there have been too many girls screaming at him this night), and he sighs a little. "I never meant to hurt you," he tells her but she just laughs bitterly. "So this is not hurting me, is it? Hooking up with my cousin three days after telling me you love me?" she turns to Lily. "See, this is what you're getting! A boy who tells you he loves you, only to leave you at the drop of a hat! He'll never stay with you, whatever he says," she screeches. "I wasn't the first, and you most certainly won't be the last girl he ever has! Take it as advice from one who knows, don't let him get too close 'cause he's a heartbreak in disguise!"

Teddy is turning slowly red with anger, his hair morphing to black, and Lily is the only one who sees the single tear make its way down Victoire's perfect cheek, and she feels impossibly sorry for this broken girl who's only doing her best to make sure she's not the only one hurting, so she places a calming hand on Teddy's arm, and turns to Vic. "I really _am_ sorry." She murmurs, and for a moment the pain shows in her cousin's eyes as she nods, her perfect hair sheeting across her face and another tell-tale tear creeps down her cheek. She steps away from the pair, turning and pushing her way through the crowd, head still held high, throwing off restraining hands and disappearing into the dark.

It takes a long time for Lily to convince James and Al to accept her and Teddy, and Teddy himself has a hard time preventing his godfather from cursing him to dust, but eventually he concedes. After all, Teddy _is_ his godson, and he thinks he is probably the one person even nearly good enough for his daughter.

And the next day the eyeliner is gone, and the hair is curly, and Teddy takes her shopping to buy her a new yellow dress, and the sparkles in her eyes are back, and brighter than before.

She marries him four years later, and as she proceeds down the aisle, radiant in a sunshine yellow dress no one even _thinks_ traffic lights.


End file.
